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San Jose, California
City History |
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| San Jose is located in Silicon Valley, at the south end of San Francisco Bay. Once a small farming city, San Jose became a magnet for suburban newcomers in new housing developments between the 1960s and the 1990s, and is now the largest city in Northern California. Originally known as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, San Jose was founded on November 29, 1777 as the first town in the Spanish colony of Nueva California, which later became Alta California. The city served as a farming community to support Spanish military installations at San Francisco and Monterey. When California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose served as its first capital. After more than 150 years as an agricultural center, increased demand for housing from soldiers and other veterans returning from World War II, as well as aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s, led San Jose to become the futuristic community for Silicon Valley. Growth in the 1970s attracted more businesses to the city. In the late 1980s, after four decades of heavy development and population growth, San Jose surpassed San Francisco in population to become the third most populous city in California. By the 1990s, San Jose's location within the booming local technology industry earned the city the nickname Capital of Silicon Valley. Present day San Jose lists 25 companies with 1,000 employees or more, including the headquarters of Adobe Systems, BEA Systems, Cisco, and eBay, as well as major facilities for Flextronics, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Hitachi and Lockheed Martin. The cost of living in San Jose and the surrounding areas is among the highest in California and the nation. Housing costs are the primary reason for the high cost of living, although the costs in all areas of San Jose are above the national average. Despite the high cost of living in San Jose, households in city limits have the highest disposable income of any city in the U.S. with over 500,000 residents. San Jose residents produce more U.S. patents than any other city. Thirty-five percent of all venture capital funds in the U.S. are invested in San Jose and Silicon Valley companies. Making San Jose CA possibly the most profitable city in the nation. |
Historic Figures
Josiah Belden (1815-1892)| Josiah Belden (1815-1892) | |
| Josiah Belden was an American, pioneer, and politician. Born in Connecticut, Belden was orphaned by the time he was 14. In 1841 he joined the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, the first organized emigrant party to use the California Trail to reach the Mexican province of Alta California. The party was detained at Mission San Jose by Comandante General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo for illegally entering Mexico without valid passports; however Vallejo violated his orders to force all American immigrants to leave California, allowing the group to remain after becoming Mexican citizens. Belden was appointed alcalde, a political position that combines the functions of a mayor, a judge, and a sheriff by Mexican rule. On October 21,1842. Jones discovered that the U.S. and Mexico were not at war, and returned the Presidio back to the Mexican forces; Belden's short term as alcalde also ended. In 1848, Belden opened a store in San Jose. After San Jose became the first incorporated city in California, Belden was elected its first mayor on April 8, 1850. He served a single one year term, and was elected to serve as a member of the city's Common Council for a one year term in 1851. | |
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